The Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback guided the team to Super Bowl victories in 1975, '76, '79 and '80. Only former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana equaled that feat at the position. With those numbers along with 27,982 yards and 212 touchdowns, Bradshaw is No. 4 on our list of Louisiana's all-time top 51 athletes.

But Bradshaw, the top pick of the NFL draft in 1970, didn't take the league by storm at first. He struggled the first couple of years, throwing a league-high 24 interceptions to six touchdowns as a rookie.

He was benched several times before finally finding success in 1974. He helped lead the Steelers to their first Super Bowl victory with a 16-6 win over the Minnesota Vikings. In that game, he threw for only 96 yards and a touchdown as the Steelers' Steel Curtain defense did most of the dirty work, holding the Vikings to just 119 yards.

With that taste of success, though, Bradshaw became the most celebrated quarterback the next five years.

In 1975, he led the Steelers to victory in Super Bowl X, passing for 209 yards - mostly to Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann, who had 161 yards receiving and was the game's MVP - and two touchdowns in Pittsburgh's 21-17 victory against the Dallas Cowboys.

He won his only NFL MVP award in 1978, passing for 2,915 yards and 28 touchdowns.

But it was in Super XIII where Bradshaw had perhaps his best-ever game. He passed for a Super Bowl-record 318 yards - the first time he passed for more than 300 yards in a game - and a record-setting four touchdowns, leading the Steelers to a 35-31 victory against their nemesis, the Dallas Cowboys. He was named the game's MVP.

The Steelers followed that by winning Super Bowl XIV and, again, Bradshaw was the MVP. He passed for 309 yards and two touchdowns, along with three interceptions, as the Steelers beat the Rams, 31-19.

The remainder of Bradshaw's career was plagued by injuries. His final game came in 1983 and his final pass, as seemed fitting, was a touchdown against the New York Jets in the last game at Shea Stadium.

Bradshaw certainly wasn't the game's most accurate passer. He completed 2,025 of 3,901 attempts, right at 52 percent, not exactly noteworthy. And he was generous to the other team. He threw 210 interceptions to 212 touchdowns.

But Bradshaw performed well in the clutch. And he did so before the rules of the game were bent in favor of the offense in the 1990s.

Though troubled by depression, Bradshaw has had a stellar career as a broadcaster and bit actor on stage and screen. He played the part at times as the dumb old country boy, a stigma given to him in the early 1970s and something that stuck. But many of his colleagues claim it's mostly an act.

He's been with FOX since 1994 and continues to be a staple on NFL broadcasts for the network.

Bradshaw was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989 in his first try. Many that day called him the greatest quarterback to ever play the game.

While that's certainly debatable, what isn't is that he's in a very select club of two, an NFL quarterback who led his team to four Super Bowl victories.